Annabel Smyth's Sermons

Sunday, 2 August 2015

I want to talk about our Gospel reading in a minute, but first of
all, we need to look at the Old Testament reading, the story of David
and Bathsheba. This is, in fact, the second week of this story –
you may have heard the first part last week, but just in case you
didn't, I'll recapitulate.

David is now King of Israel and Judah, a united kingdom. He has
built a very splendid palace in Jerusalem, and is one of the richest
and most powerful men in the region. And, like many rich and
powerful men, he has a high sex drive, and, of course, many women
find riches and power very aphrodisiac.

So David can more-or-less have any woman he wants, and, quite
probably, the reverse is also true – any woman who wants the King
can have him! And there is Bathsheba, Uriah's wife, who allows
herself to be seen while having her ritual bath – and responds to
the King's summons.

Unfortunately, what neither Bathsheba nor David had any way of
knowing, given the state of medical knowledge back then, was that
when you have just finished your monthly purification rituals is when
you are likely to be at your most fertile. And so it comes about
that Bathsheba finds herself pregnant, and there's no way it can be
anybody other than David's.

And they panic. David could arguably have got away with it, but
he wasn't going to abandon Bathsheba like that, and, it's probable
that it was she who panicked. Uriah, from what we read about him,
strikes me as very much the kind of person who always does the right
thing, no matter what the personal cost to himself, and in this case,
the right thing to have done was to have had Bathsheba, who had
obviously committed adultery, stoned to death. Yes, killed. Even if
he hadn't wanted to do that. He was far too prim and proper to sleep
with his wife while on active service, no matter how hard David tried
to make him do that – if he had, he would have accepted the coming
child as his own, and their problems would have been solved. But he
refused, because his country was at war and he was a soldier on
active service, and wouldn't even go and see Bathsheba, even when
David got him drunk, but just slept on his blanket in the guard room.

So David feels he has no option but to get rid of Uriah, which he
does by causing him to be sent into the front line of battle, and get
killed. And as soon as it is decently possible, he marries
Bathsheba.

End of story? No, not quite. You see, it might seem to have all
been tidied up and nobody any the wiser, but they had forgotten God.
And God was not one bit pleased with what David had done.

So he sends Nathan the Prophet – brave man, Nathan, wasn't he? -
to say to David that there is a man who only had one sheep, just one,
and a rich bully had taken that sheep away from him. So David said,
well, who is this bully, I'll deal with him – he can't get away
with that sort of thing in my kingdom, so he can't! And Nathan looks
him in the eye and says, “It's you, dear!”

And, then David sees exactly what he has done. The lust, the
adultery, the deception, the murder. He looks at himself and does
not like what he sees, not one tiny little bit. He doesn't know what
God must think of him, but he knows what he thinks of himself – and
he knows, too, that he needs to repent. Which he does, and some of
the words he is said to have used have come down to us:
Have mercy on me, O God, in your great goodness;
according
to the abundance of your compassion
blot
out my offences.
Wash me thoroughly from my
wickedness
and cleanse me from my sin.
For
I acknowledge my faults
and my sin is ever
before me.
Behold, you desire truth deep within me
and
shall make me understand wisdom
in
the depths of my heart.
Turn your face from my sins
and
blot out all my misdeeds.
Make me a clean heart, O
God,
and renew a right spirit within me.
Cast
me not away from your presence
and take not your
holy spirit from me.
Give me again the joy of your
salvation
and sustain me with your gracious
spirit;
Deliver me from my guilt, O God,
the
God of my salvation,
and my tongue shall sing of
your righteousness.
O Lord, open my lips
and
my mouth shall proclaim your praise.
For you desire no
sacrifice, else I would give it;
you take no
delight in burnt offerings.
The sacrifice of God is a
broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O
God, you will not despise.

And so on. There's a bit more, but I've not quoted it all –
it's Psalm 51, if you want to have a read of it.

Anyway, the point is, his repentance is genuine, and he will be
reinstated. The child will not live, though. And there is that
lovely scene where the child is born, and David is told that it
cannot live – it hasn't “come to stay”, as they used to say –
and he prostrates himself before the Lord in prayer. And the baby
duly dies, and the servants are at a loss to know how to tell him,
thinking that if he's in that sort of mood, he might well shoot the
messenger, but when they have stood outside the door for ten minutes
going “You tell him,” “No, you tell him!” he realises what's
going on – and when he finds out that the baby has died, he
astonishes them all by going and washing his face and going to
comfort Bathsheba, and when asked, he points out that while the baby
was still alive, there was hope that God might yet be persuaded to
let it live, but now that it's dead, there's no hope and it won't
help anybody to lie on the floor rolling about in grief.

And as we know, just to round off the story, Bathsheba and David
do eventually have another child, who becomes King Solomon, arguably
the greatest King of the combined kingdoms.

David's main fault, I think, that started the whole sorry saga,
was greed. He was greedy for life, and for women, and for pleasure.
He wanted to have it all, and had to learn the hard way that it
wasn't all his.

Jesus says much the same to the followers in the Gospel reading,
doesn't he? It takes place almost immediately after Jesus has fed
five thousand or more people with a small boy’s packed lunch.
He
then sends the disciples on ahead of him, so he can spend some time
in prayer and being quiet for a bit –
in some of the gospels,
we’re told that he’s just heard about his cousin John’s
execution and needs a bit of space to grieve.
Anyway, he then
walks across the lake to join the disciples,
and next day the
crowd finds him on the other side of the lake than they’d expected.

But Jesus reckons they’re not
following him because of his teachings,
but because they want
another free lunch.
“Very truly, I tell you, you are looking
for me, not because you saw signs,
but because you ate your fill
of the loaves."

And this is not what he plans for them.
“Do not work for
the food that perishes,
but for the food that endures for eternal
life,
which the Son of Man will give you.”

Jesus points out that in the wilderness, it wasn’t Moses who
provided manna for the children of Israel to eat, but God.
And
it is God who gives the true Bread from Heaven.
“I,” said
Jesus, “am the Bread of Life”.
You know what I’m reminded of
here?
The story of woman at the well, a little earlier on in
John’s Gospel.
She asks Jesus to work the pump for her, which
he duly does, but he tells her that he is the Living Water, and any
who drink of that water will never be thirsty again.
Same sort
of principle.

Many – not all, but many – of those who followed Jesus did so
because they wanted the spectacular. They wanted a free lunch from a
small boy's packed lunch. They wanted to see the healings, the
deliverances, the people collapsing on the floor as evil spirits left
them, and so on. They weren't interested in the teachings, in the
way your faith has to manifest itself in actions or it isn't really
part of you, in loving their neighbour, in feeding the hungry....
they were wanting to believe in Jesus without having to become Jesus'
person. I don't want to pre-empt what you'll doubtless hear about
next week, but many of them walked away when the teachings got too
hard for them to cope with.

And what about us? What about you and me? Are we just interested
in the next thrill, the next sensation, the next fashion? Are we
willing to be Jesus' disciples, and pay the price that the Bread of
Life requires – all of us. Even the dreadful bits, even the bits
that we'd rather keep hidden. David had to surrender all of himself
before he could receive God's forgiveness. Can we do that? It's
very far from easy, and I don't pretend to be able to, at least, not
all the time. It has to be a daily, hourly, moment-by-moment
surrender. And when you find you've taken yourself back again, as it
were, then it's all to be done again. What it needs, of course, is
the will on our part to be Jesus' person, even if we don't succeed
all the time.

King David was not a wicked man. He did a very evil thing when he
allowed his lust for Bathsheba to overtake his common sense, but
normally he was God's person – and when it was pointed out to him
where he'd gone wrong, he came back.

My friends, let's be like David. When we go wrong, when we take
ourselves back and live our own lives again, and when we realise
we're doing that, then let's recommit ourselves into God's hands. He
will be there to welcome us back with loving arms. “There you
are, there you are at last! Welcome home!” Amen.

Sunday, 12 July 2015

David, we are told in our first
reading, danced before the Lord! And if we are to believe his wife,
he was really rather over-enthusiastic about it, especially given
what he was, or was not, wearing! But what is happening, and what is
this story all about?

Well, to answer that question, we need
to go back some forty or fifty years, right to the story of Samuel in
the Temple. Now, we call it the Temple, but it wasn't the Temple
that we think of in Jerusalem, the one that Jesus chased the
money-changers out of from. In fact, it wasn't in Jerusalem at all,
but in a place called Shiloh. It
was the place where the Ark of the Covenant resided.

The
Ark had been built very soon after the Israelites had left Egypt. It
was a box of acacia wood, gold-plated, and richly decorated. You can
read about it in Exodus, if you've a mind to. It was designed to be
carried, but you didn't ever touch it – it had carrying-rings
through which two acacia-wood poles were pushed, and they were a
permanent fixture, apparently. The Ark travelled with the Israelites
during their wandering in the desert, and when they stopped, it had
its own special place in the inner room of its own special tent.
Only the priests were allowed to look at it – when it travelled, it
was covered up with hides or material, and only the priests were
allowed into the inner room of the tent. When the Israelites reached
the promised land, the Ark was taken to Shiloh, and it looks as
though a more permanent home was made for it, although we're not told
when, or by whom. And it did still occasionally go with the
Israelites into battle!

The
Ark contained the tablets on which Moses had inscribed the ten
commandments. Hebrews tells us it also contained a jar of manna and
Aaron's staff that had flowered. But the thing about the Ark was
that it was not only a sacred object in its own right, it also
represented God.

Anyway,
we rejoin the story in the days of Samuel, when Eli was the priest in
the Temple.

Back then, being a priest was something
that only certain families could do;

and if your father was a priest, you
usually were, too.

It’s actually only within quite
recent history that what you do with your life isn’t determined by
what your father did, and back then, you followed in your father’s
profession,

and if your father was a priest, as Eli
was, then you would expect to be one, too.

Unfortunately, Eli’s sons were not
really priestly material.

They abused the office dreadfully –

taking parts of the sacrifices that
were meant to be burnt for God alone,

sleeping with the women who served at
the entrance to the temple.

I don’t think these women were
prostitutes –

temple prostitution was definitely a
part of some religions in the area,

but I don’t think it ever was part of
Judaism.

These women would have been servants to
Eli and his family, I expect,

and considered that service as part of
their devotion to God.

And perhaps, too, they helped people
who had come to make sacrifices and so on.

Whatever, Hophni and Phineas, Eli’s
sons, shouldn’t have been sleeping with them,

and they shouldn’t have been
disrespecting the sacrifices, either.

There had been a prophecy that the Lord
would not honour Eli’s family any more, and that Hophni and Phineas
would both die on the same day,

and a different family would take over
the priesthood.

Eli had tried to tell his sons that
their behaviour was unacceptable, but they hadn’t listened, and one
rather gets the impression that he had given up on them.

He was
not a young man, by any manner of means.

And
then Samuel hears God calling in the night, and when he answers, this
is what God has to say. It was not a message of encouragement and
reassurance, such as you might expect, but this:

“See, I am about to do something in
Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle.

On that day I will fulfil against Eli
all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end.

For I have told him that I am about to
punish his house forever,

for the iniquity that he knew, because
his sons were blaspheming God,

and he did not restrain them.

Therefore I swear to the house of Eli
that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be expiated by sacrifice
or offering forever.”

There will be no escape for Eli;

he could, and should, have stopped his
sons from being blasphemous,

from disrespecting the offerings of
God’s people,

from sleeping with the temple servants.

I get the feeling Eli has rather given
up, don’t you?

When Samuel tells him what the Lord has
said, his reaction is simply,

“It is the Lord;

let
him do what seems good to him.”

And
sure enough, there was a battle with the Philistines, and because it
was going rather badly, the elders decided to have the Ark brought
from Shiloh because it would give heart to people and tell them that
God was with them. Big Mistake. The Ark arrived, and all the
Israelites shouted for joy. The Philistines were rather disconcerted
by this, so they decided to attack again – and things went horribly
wrong. About thirty thousand men were slaughtered, including Hophni
and Phineas, and the Ark was captured! Eli, too old, too blind and
too fat to fight, was so horrified when he heard the news that he had
a heart attack or stroke and died. It wasn't so much his sons'
deaths, but the loss of the Ark.

But
you don't capture the Ark with impunity! The Philistines took it to
their capital, Ashdod, and put it in the Temple of Dagon, only to
find that the statue of Dagon had fallen down before it, as if in
worship. And the next day, they found the same thing had happened
again, only this time the statue was in pieces. And the townsfolk
began to get ill, so after seven months the Philistines said they
would send it back. Only how? Any couriers they sent with it would
certainly be killed out of hand. So they decided to load it on a
cart pulled by two cows, and allow the cows to take it where they
would, assuming that if the Ark wanted to be back with the Israelites
the cows would take it to the nearest Israelite town. They also put
some gold treasure in a separate box and sent that, too. And, sure
enough, the cows went straight to the nearest Israelite town. And
eventually the Ark settles down in a place called Kiriath-Jearim,
which is about 15 kilometres from Jerusalem, and a man called Eleazer
the son of Abinadab is consecrated to look after it.

And
the years go by. Saul is anointed king, and then David. The wars
with the Philistines continue. David and Saul fall out. There are
all sorts of adventures and battles and sadness and misery, and some
happiness, too. And now, at last, we come to today's reading. David
has now conquered Jerusalem, the City of David, and has decided to
move the Ark there, too. So they all go down to Baale-Judah, which
appears to be another name for Kiriath-Jearim, and the Ark is put on
a new cart to be brought home with great rejoicing. But then, and
this bit was omitted from our reading, something dreadful happens –
the oxen pulling the Ark stumble, and someone rather thoughtlessly
reaches out his hand to steady it. Now that is what you simply
didn't do with the Ark, and the man, called Uzzah, fell down dead on
the spot. David is very worried, and thinks, well, maybe I'd better
not have the Ark in Jerusalem with me if this sort of thing is going
to happen, and he leaves it in care of a man called Obed the Gittite
for about three months. Until, that is, he learns that God has
richly blessed Obed for taking care of the Ark, and he decides that,
after all, it can come into the city. And so we see him leaping and
dancing before it, bouncing all over the place and, just possibly,
showing a little more of himself than perhaps was polite. Whatever,
his wife, Michal, was most embarrassed on his behalf – imagine the
King behaving like that! And to round off the story, when David gets
home at the end of the party – because of course, when the Ark
arrived, there was a huge party – Michal says rather snottily, “Oh
my, look at this great king exposing himself before all the
serving-girls.” And David said, “It was before the Lord, who
anointed me King, and bother the servant-girls!” And Michal,
apparently, remained childless, although whether that's because she
was actually barren or because she and David didn't go to bed
together again, I'm not sure. David did, after all, have lots of
other wives and concubines.

So
anyway, that's the story, and some of the background, but what does
it have to say to us today? How is it relevant?

I
think it's about sacredness, and about whole-heartedness. The Ark
was a sacred object. David would have liked to have built a proper
temple for it, but God said no, and in the end it was his son,
Solomon, who did so. But wherever the Ark was, it was in its own
inner room, and it was the most holy place. Only the High Priest
ever went in there, and he would always take blood with him, so the
letter to the Hebrews tells us. And, of course, Hebrews reminds us
that it is Jesus who is our great High Priest, and the Holy of Holies
on earth was only a copy, a shadow, of the real one in Heaven. And
because of Jesus' sacrifice, we can enter with boldness into God's
presence.

The
Ark was a sacred object, and nothing and nobody unclean could touch
it. It's long since vanished – after all, it was no longer
necessary once Jesus had been raised from dead, and you may remember
that when he died, the curtain covering the entrance was torn in two.
But when it was there, it was a real, and present, symbol of God's
presence, and you touched it at your peril. It does serve to remind
us that God is holy, and we who are his people need to be holy, too.
We can't achieve holiness, wholeness, if you like, by ourselves, but
only through the power of the Holy Spirit working in us. But because
we are now bound by the New Covenant, rather than the Old, we can
enter God's presence with boldness. But we do well to remember, at
least some of the time, that God is holy.

And
the other thing is about whole-heartedness. David danced before the
Lord with all his heart. He didn't care that his hair was all over
the place, and his face was red and sweaty, and his loincloth had
slipped. He was worshipping the Lord, honouring the One who had
brought him from being a humble shepherd-boy to one of the most
powerful rulers in the region. David was very far from perfect, as
we know, but he never, ever forgot what he owed to God, and he
worshipped God with all his heart, and soul, and mind, and strength.

And
we? Do we remember what we owe to God? Do we remember that Jesus
came to be one of us, to live among us and share what it's like to be
human, and to die for us? Do we worship God with our whole being,
forgetting to be self-conscious about what we are doing, focussing
solely on God?

Sunday, 21 June 2015

Well, these are two very familiar
stories that we have just heard read, aren't they? David killing
Goliath, and Jesus calming the storm. I'm sure I've known them since
I was in Kindergarten, and I expect you have, too. Let's look at
them more closely, and then see what, if anything, ties them together
and what, if anything, they have to say to us as God's people
gathered here this morning.

---oo0oo---

So then, firstly David and Goliath.
Just to remind you, in the part of the chapter that we didn't read,
as it would have made the reading far too long, we learn that the
Israelites under King Saul are at war with the Philistines, and
things aren't going well. The Philistines' champion, Goliath, is
challenging someone to single combat, which was a recognised way of
finishing a war – you often find this happening in novels,
especially if you read the sort of historical fantasy novels I do!
Anyway, Goliath was rather terrifying and none of the Israelites felt
able to stand up to him.

Now three of Jesse's sons are fighting
with the army, and David, the youngest, is mostly responsible for
looking after the sheep. One day his father tells him to leave all
that, and to take some food to his brothers and their commanding
officer in the camp, and to come back with news of what's going on
and whether his brothers are all right. So David goes off.

And, of course, when he gets there, he
hears all about Goliath's challenge, and the reward the king has put
up for defeating him – a big financial reward, plus his daughter's
hand in marriage and tax relief for his family, the usual sort of
thing that heroes always are promised! David keeps asking about
this, and his eldest brother tells him to shut up and go home:
“You've only come to watch the fighting. Now go away and look
after your sheep and stop being such a smartarse!”

But David, quite rightly, takes that as
merely elder-brother-itis, and goes on asking until he understands
what is happening, and what is at stake. Then he has a little think.
He can kill lions and bears and wolves when they threaten his flock,
he's been doing so for years. How is Goliath going to be any
different? So he goes to the King and says he's up for it. The king
says “Don't talk nonsense, you're just a boy, how could you
possibly fight a professional soldier?”

David explains about the wild animals
and points out that if God has kept him safe from those, he'll surely
keep him safe from Goliath. The King is rather desperate by now, so
he says, okay, have a go.

They load up David with armour until he
can scarcely walk – do you get the impression they are laughing at
him? But David, as we heard in our reading, said he couldn't manage
with that. And with a stone and his slingshot, he hits Goliath
square in the forehead, breaking his skull and killing him. And,
just to finish off the story, David grabs Goliath's sword and cuts
his head off with it, and the Philistines all run away, so the
Israelites are victorious.

There are some rather odd bits of this
story, of course – apparently, in the earliest versions nothing is
said about David taking food to his brothers, but he's just there
with the army all along, and they omit those verses where Saul
appears not to know who David is, despite the fact that earlier in
the book he has appointed him as shield-bearer and court musician.
And Goliath's height is rather more realistic – instead of being
over nine feet tall, he is described as over six feet tall, which is
still enormous by the standards of the day! So some of the ambiguous
bits are probably from a folk tradition of the story that got mixed
in. There are also questions as to whether that sort of armour was
worn at that sort of date, and whether the tradition of challenging
someone to single combat existed in that culture, and so on and so
forth. But I don't think they matter, because it doesn't make the
story any less true, even if some of the factual details are
arguable.

---oo0oo---

So let's fast-forward nine hundred
years or so and go a little further north along the Mediterranean
until we reach Jesus and the disciples on the Sea of Galilee. We
don't know exactly where they were, it doesn't say. What it does say
is that Jesus has been teaching all day, and vast crowds came to hear
him, so he stood in a boat so that everybody could see and, we hope,
hear. And at the end of the day, he suggests that they cross to the
other side of the lake, and he collapses, exhausted, on to a cushion
in the stern and falls asleep while the disciples row across.

I don't know if you've ever been to
Galilee? I haven't, although my parents have. But some years ago
now, one of the ministers in the then Brixton circuit went, and when
he came back, he told us that he had actually been on a boat on the
lake when one of the sudden storms blew up, and that it really had
been quite scary. And I've been looking at some videos on YouTube,
and it really does seem quite stormy. I believe these easterly winds
can blow up very suddenly, too, and it might have been fine when they
set out.

So there are the disciples, many of
them experienced fishermen who know about the sea of Galilee,
struggling to control the boat in the storm, and there is Jesus,
sound asleep. So they wake him up and yell at him: “All hands on
deck, there! Don't you go sleeping as if you don't care whether we
drown or not!”

And Jesus, instead of helping to pull
on the oars, which is probably what they expected, addresses the
storm and it calms down as quickly as it came up. And he asks why
they were still so afraid? Where, he wonders, was their faith.

But of course, this demonstration of
his power over nature made them even more afraid than ever.

---oo0oo---

So, then, what is the link
between these two stories, and what do they have to say to us today?

I suppose the obvious link
is that, in each story, people were out of their depth. They
couldn't control the situation. The Israelites had no way of coping
with the Philistine army, and especially not with Goliath and his
challenges. The disciples couldn't cope with the storm. They were
out of their depths, and everybody was afraid.

David, when he went up
against Goliath, or so we are told, said firmly that he was going in
the Lord's strength, not in his own. He refused to put his trust in
bronze armour, but in the weapons he knew, backed up by the Lord's
righteousness.

The disciples were unable to
trust in their usual methods of getting home safely when the wind
started to blow. The oars simply would not co-operate, as the winds
were too strong, and those who didn't know how to row were wanted to
bail, but they couldn't keep up, either. It wasn't until Jesus
intervened that they were safe.

So it's a bit about trusting
God when things go pear-shaped, but, as we all know, that is easier
said than done! So maybe it's a bit about not panicking when things
get out of control. If we can't trust God – and, as I've just
said, that is often easier said than done – if we can't trust God,
then let's look round for someone who can. In the Israelite's case,
this was David. He trusted God, he didn't panic when he faced
Goliath, and he trusted that God would use his skills to defeat the
enemy. And that is exactly what happened. The Israelites relied on
David's faith, and God saved them.

And for the disciples, their
faith was fast asleep in the back of the boat. They, at that moment,
couldn't trust God to save them, but Jesus could, and did. He didn't
panic when he saw the boat was swamped, he trusted that God would use
his power to still the storm. And that is exactly what happened.
The disciples relied on Jesus' faith, and God saved them.

Now, all too often, we are
the ones who panic, who can't cope, when the situation has got out of
our control. I know I am. But wouldn't it be lovely if we were the
ones who people could rely on to have faith? To not panic when we
saw what the situation was, to trust God to use our skills – or to
intervene directly in some way – to save the situation.

Mind you, if we were like
that – and I'm sure some of us are, although not me – then it is
just as well we don't know it, or we'd start to rely on our faith and
not on God. It's one of those paradoxes, like it always irritates me
– does it you? - when people talk about the power of prayer, as it
isn't the prayer, it is the God who answers prayer.

But I think we should all
aspire to be that kind of person. And you can't be one just by
wishing. It is really only by God's grace, by God's power at work
within us, that we can become the people God created us to be, people
who don't panic when life gets out of control but who trust God,
either directly or through the use of their skills, to sort things
out again.

But we can grow into that
kind of person, by using the means of grace available to us –
prayer, fellowship, the Scriptures, Holy Communion. But being aware,
as Wesley was aware and reminds us in his sermon on the means of
grace, that they are only a means, not an end in themselves. They
need to be used to bring us closer to God, so that God can, by the
power of the Holy Spirit, make us more the people we were created to
be. We will become more like David, and less like Saul. Amen.

Sunday, 14 June 2015

This is a very special occasion, isn't it? It's such a rare thing
– far too rare – that we commission a Local Preacher on to the
Full Plan. And it's a wonderful thing when it happens, when the
Church acknowledges that not only has God called Felicia to this
wonderful work, but that she has worked as hard as she could to
prepare herself.

Those of us who are preachers – and perhaps some of us who are
worship leaders, too – will probably be remembering their own
commissioning services. I wonder how you felt? I remember feeling
very scared – somehow, for some reason, they thought I was ready!
Even now, the best part of a quarter of a century later, I sometimes
wonder when they'll find out what a fraud I really am.....

Yet I know I was called, as we know Felicia has been called, and
as all of us have been called to serve God in some way or another.
As in the Gospel reading we have just heard, where three people were
given very particular gifts.

This story is a very old friend –
most of us, I expect, have known it since our nursery days.
Indeed, it is –
or used to be –
often employed by teachers and so on to push children on to
practice and work hard.
If God has given you talents, they say,
then you must work to make the absolute very best of them.

But, of course, it isn’t so much about talents in that sense –
although it can be taken that way.
It’s about money.
Or at least, in Jesus’ story it’s about money.
It is about gifts, and the way we use them, but on face value, the
story is about money.

A talent was serious money back then.
Maybe about twenty years’ wages for your average labourer;
maybe more.
Serious money.
So the master was not messing about when he asked his slaves to
look after it for him.
One slave was given five talents, another two and the third just
one.
I suppose in these days they would be share portfolios,
and the slaves would be young investment bankers or stockbrokers
or something like that.

The master goes away, for whatever reason, and shares out the
money.
And then he goes away, and doesn’t come back and doesn’t come
back.
Maybe he is away for months, maybe years, maybe even a decade or
more:
the text just says “A long time”.
And while he is away, things happen.
The first and second servants both go into business for themselves
using their unexpected capital.
Perhaps they deal on the stock exchange.
Perhaps they open up a business of some kind –
a restaurant, say, or buying and selling houses.
We’re just told they traded with their money.

I expect they made themselves seriously rich, too.
They would have felt able to pay themselves a good salary,
while all the time preserving and adding to their Master’s
capital.

But what of Number 3?
He’s quite comfortable already, thank you.
He has a good, secure job;
he would really rather be employed by someone than go into
business for himself.
It doesn’t occur to him that, of all the slaves,
he was the one chosen to see what he would do,
whether he would have the courage to invest that capital.
And in any event, he doesn’t have that sort of courage.
Supposing something went wrong and he lost it all?
The consequences don’t bear thinking about!
Better play safe.
Very safe.
Not the bank –
not with the current banking crisis, thank you very much!
Okay, maybe his money would be safe,
but he wouldn’t be comfortable thinking about it, just in case
it wasn’t.
Better just dig a hole in the ground and pretend you’re planting
carrots or potatoes.
So that’s what he does;
the sort of moral equivalent of putting it into
old sock under his mattress, or in his underwear drawer.
And he gets on with his life.

And then, one day, the Master comes back.
I wonder whether they had ever really expected that he would,
or if they had almost forgotten they weren’t in it for
themselves.

And the first and the second servant come swanning up with all the
trappings of wealth –
chauffeur-driven Rollers,
Philippe Patek watches,
Louis Vuitton briefcases,
the best smartphones on the market,
and, finally, able to present the Master with
share certificates
and bank statements
and other records of profit and loss to show him that they had
each doubled their investments.

The Master is delighted.
“Well done, you good and faithful servant.” he says to them.

“You’ve been faithful in little things” –
not that little;
a “talent” was, as I said, serious money –
“now you’ll be put in charge of great things.
Enter in to the joy of your Master!”

And then along comes the third servant.
On a pushbike.
And he presents his master with a filthy dirty and rather crumpled
envelope containing the original bankers’ order.
“I couldn’t face it, Master!” he explains.
“supposing it had all gone wrong
What would you have said to me?
You’re very harsh, and you do like your people to make you lots
of money,
and I was too scared to try.
So I have kept it safe, and here you are!”

And the Master is seriously annoyed!
“Oh, look here!” he said.
“So you didn’t want to play the stock market or start a
business, okay,
but couldn’t you at least have put it on deposit somewhere for
me,
so I could have had the interest?
Just not good enough, I’m afraid.
Take him away!”

The story is, of course, part of Jesus' teachings about the
Kingdom of Heaven,
and I think it isn't easy for him to put things
into words that really don't go into words!
You may remember other stories he also told about it,
trying to find an illustration that would make sense to his
hearers,
talking of the tiny grain of mustard seed that grew to become
a huge shrub,
or the tiny bit of yeast that was needed to make the dough rise.
I don't know if you realise that these stories don't say to us
quite what they said to Jesus’ first hearers,
as mustard was a terrific weed, like stinging-nettles,
and nobody in their right mind would plant it deliberately.
And yeast –
or sourdough, more probably –
was not really associated with people of God,
since what you had at the holy feasts was unleavened bread,
which was then, by association, considered slightly more “proper”
than ordinary bread.
And the thought of a woman baking it may well have turned people
up a bit –
women tended to be rather “non-persons” in those days.

And, actually, it’s the same here.
Particularly for the third slave –
you what?
He should have put his money in the bank​?To earn interest?

I don’t think so!

Jewish people in that time and place
took very seriously the commandment that “thou shalt not lend out
thy money upon usury”.

So here is the master telling the slave
that he should have done just that?

Yikes!

So what does it all mean?

How is it relevant to a commissioning
service?

This whole story comes in a section of
teaching about the End Times,

something we don’t really like to
think about these days.

Jesus has been saying that nobody, not
even he, knows the day and hour –

there will be all sorts of signs and
symbols and symbolism, but they don’t necessarily mean anything.

And people will say “Oh, Jesus
is coming on this
date,” or “the end of the world is coming on that
date”, but not to believe them.

He says nobody knows when it will
happen –

and these days, increasingly, it’s or
even if it will happen –

but the idea is to be prepared.

“Who,” Jesus asks,

“are faithful and wise servants?

Who are the ones the master will put in
charge of giving the other servants their food supplies at the proper
time?

Servants are fortunate if their master
comes and finds them doing their job.

You may be sure that a servant who is
always faithful will be put in charge of everything the master owns.”

The earlier part of
this chapter

told the story of
the wise and foolish bridesmaids,

and whether you
would rather be with the wise bridesmaids in the light,

or the foolish ones in the dark....

well, not quite
that, but you know what I mean.

The sensible
girls were prepared and ready –

the silly ones
hadn’t even thought they might need to light lamps if it got late.

So again, Jesus is trying to draw
pictures of things that don’t go into words very well;

he’s trying to make his hearers
understand what it’s going to be like,

when he himself doesn’t have a very
clear picture of it.

But one thing he does know –

we need to live as if he were never
coming back,

but be prepared for him to return any
second now!

It’s one of those Christian paradoxes
that our faith is so full of.

It’s not just about what we do with
our money, or with our time –

although obviously we need to make sure
we are good stewards of both.

It’s maybe more, I think, about what
we do with our relationship with God.

We are all, I expect, Christians here;

all people who enjoy a reciprocal
relationship with their Creator.

And some people make the most of it!

Most of us do, I am quite sure.

We make a point of learning who we are,
so we can be honest with God,

we make a point of learning from the
Bible who God is,

and making a point of developing the
relationship by spending time with God each day.

We don’t find it easy –

nothing worthwhile ever is easy –

and, of course, the ones who are really
expert at it tend to make it look easy, which tends to make us feel
inadequate.

But, of course, most of what we do to
grow as a Christian is actually done by God;

our job is to be open to being grown –

and to use the “means of grace”
that we have been given to do that.

But there are others around –

not here, I don’t suppose, not for
one moment –

but I’m sure we know people who
joyously responded to God’s call upon their life –

and then got stuck.

Didn’t grow, didn’t, maybe, even
want to grow and change.

Stayed as baby Christians, still
drinking milk when they should have been weaned on to meat, as St
Paul puts it.

And maybe, one day, they will have to
explain themselves, too.

“You had all these opportunities to
become the person you were meant to be, but you wasted them.

Why?”

But Felicia has not done that. I've
known her for some years now, ever since she first began to be aware
that God was calling her to be one of “Mr Wesley's preachers”. I
know how hard she's worked to get where she is today, not least
because when she started out, her English really wasn't very good,
and she sometimes struggled to understand what was going on. It's
been a long struggle, and I know there were times when she didn't
find it easy. The London Course, which is how she trained, is very
intensive – for fifteen months they meet almost every week, and there are
several weekends away for periods of more intense study. No long
holidays, the year you do it! And you have to preach every couple of
months, and a qualified preacher has to listen to you and then send a critique to
your tutors which you aren't allowed to see first! Really hard work.
But Felicia did it, and I've had the privilege of watching her grow
and become better and better at it over the last few years. So
congratulations, Felicia!

And may we all follow your example.
We're not all called to preach, but we are all called to be God's
people. We need to allow God to work in us, to make us the people we
have the potential to be, and maybe even to make us more than that.

Sunday, 17 May 2015

I didn't record the children's talk.Please scroll down for the podcast of the main sermon.

Children's talk: What are you waiting for?

When I was a little girl, which was
quite a long time ago now, I used to really look forward to my
birthday. And the night before, it would be very difficult to go to
sleep, just like it was difficult to go to sleep the night before
Christmas. My mother used to say, "The sooner you go to sleep,
the sooner it will be morning." But that didn't make it any
easier to go to sleep!

I wasn't very good at waiting for it to
be Christmas, or waiting for it to be my birthday. I always used to
peek at presents, to try to guess what they were. Of course, people
who are good at waiting never peek, do they? My daughter and
my husband never peek – always makes me so cross with them!

Are you any good at waiting? What, if
anything, are you waiting for right now? I know soon it will be time
to wait for exam results... and that is nerve-wracking.

Do you know what the disciples were
waiting for? I don't think they did, really, but they were waiting
for the Holy Spirit. They didn't know what that meant, but they knew
it when they happened. They had to wait, though. It's okay to have
to wait for God – things will happen in God's time. Not much of a
consolation if you're as impatient as I am, but it's a lesson we all
have to learn.

Sermon: Waiting on God

Our reading from Acts is really rather
an odd story, isn't it? What did the disciples think they were
doing? And why? And who on earth were Joseph Barsabas and
Matthias? We have never heard of them before, and we practically never hear of
them again!

The thing is, this story happens in a
very odd time in the history of the world. Jesus has gone – we
don't know the full details, other than the account a few verses
earlier than the one we read, or the account in John's Gospel, but we
do know that something happened to make the disciples realise that
they weren't going to see him again exactly like that. Jesus has
gone, and the Holy Spirit has not yet come.

Jesus has gone, and the Holy Spirit has
not yet come. A very strange and disturbing time for them. They
have been told to go to Jerusalem and wait, which they do, about a
hundred and twenty of them, including Jesus' mother, Peter, James and
the other nine apostles.

And, of course, they don't know exactly
what they are waiting for. They don't know what it's going to be
like when the Holy Spirit comes. They don't know that each and every
one of them will be empowered to preach the Gospel with boldness and
fluency and such power that many, many thousands of people will be
converted and that the church they found will last down the years.
They don't know this.

We're not told how long they had to
wait. We give them ten days, until next Sunday, but it may have been
longer. We don't quite know how long Jesus was appearing to them
after his resurrection, but we do know it was at least a week –
poor Thomas had to wait a whole week after missing Jesus' first visit
and being totally sure the others must have been deluded. We do know
that the feast of Pentecost, which we in the Church celebrate next
Sunday, was the day when the Holy Spirit came, so that gives a last
date – roughly six weeks after the Resurrection. So the disciples
could have been waiting nearly a month between the final earthly
farewells and the coming of the Spirit.

And waiting isn't easy, is it?
Especially when you don't quite know what you are waiting for. How
will they know when the Spirit has come? We know, of course, that
She came in a rushing mighty wind and in tongues of fire, but they
didn't know in advance that this is what was going to happen.

So it's not
surprising that the first thing they thought to do was to make up the
numbers of the Twelve – for Judas, who betrayed our Lord, had never
repented the way Peter had, but despaired and died. And the eleven
decided that, of the others in the group of 70 around Jesus, it was
between Matthias and Barsabas, although we are not told why they
thought it came down to these two. Peter said that the criteria
were: “He must be one of the men who were in our group during the
whole time that the Lord Jesus travelled about with us, beginning from
the time John preached his message of baptism until the day Jesus was
taken up from us to heaven.” There may well have been quite a lot
of those around, and we're not told why specifically these two.

Anyway, they cast lots to decide which
one it would be. These days, I dare say, they would have voted, but
back then, casting lots – rather like tossing a coin – was
thought to be a way of discerning what God wanted. And Matthias
gets it – and we never hear of either him or Barsabas again,
although I suppose that they were among those in the Upper Room at
Pentecost.

Well, we never hear of Matthias again.
Barsabas gets a couple of mentions – he goes with Silas to Antioch
with the letter from the Council of Jerusalem, outlining the
conditions for Gentile believers, and he is described as a prophet,
and brought the believers “comfort and strength” before going
back to Jerusalem, and we don't know what happened to him after that.

As for Matthias, the Bible never
mentions him again, but there a few stories from the traditional
sources. Although there are several different stories, it looks as
though he ended up preaching and evangelising in what is now
modern-day Georgia, and died there; there is, however, one source
that claims he was stoned to death in Jerusalem, and still another
says he died of old age. You pays your money and you takes your
choice, if you ask me!

So were they wrong, do you think, to
try to appoint another apostle? After all, it is not very long
before Paul is converted and becomes the self-proclaimed “apostle
to the Gentiles”. And God used his education and literacy to
spread his interpretation of the Good News, as written in the
Epistles, far and wide and so down to us today.

But I don't think it mattered. I am
sure God honoured their decision to appoint Matthias, even though it
turned out not to have been necessary. After all, they are fidgety.
They are waiting for something, and don't know what it is or when it
will happen. The temptation to go home, to go back to Galilee and
fish, must have been almost overwhelming. They have done this once,
though, and were told to go back to Jerusalem to wait.

And here they are, waiting. And
waiting. I hate waiting, don't you? I am not a patient person, and
I might have been tempted to have left Jerusalem and got on with my
life. I hope I wouldn't have, but, well.....

It really isn't always easy to wait for
God, is it? I'm sure you've had the experience of praying for
something, and it not happening and not happening and not happening,
and then all of a sudden it does happen. And you can't help
wondering whether you had started to do something differently, or
what, that made it happen, when, of course, it was just that not
everything was ready for God to answer your prayer.

Waiting
for God isn't a bit easy. Who was it prayed, "Give me patience,
Lord, and I want it now!"? We always have to think we
know better than God does – we want whatever it is now, and
we don't see why God is delaying letting us have it. So then we
whinge and moan at God, and some people even want to give up being
God's person altogether.

Trouble is, of course, if you do
that, if you try to know best, what you are saying, even if you don't
realise it, is "Do it my way, God! Don't do it your way, do it
my way!" And that is not a very sensible thing to say, because,
quite apart from anything else, God can see round corners and we
can't!

Sometimes it takes time until we can say to God, "Okay
God, do it your way! Don't do it my way!" Jesus had to say that
to God in the Garden of Gethsemane, do you remember? He really,
really didn't want to have to go through with it, and he had to
absolutely fight with himself until he got to the point where he
could say "Do it your way!" to God.

And sometimes, of course, God's answer
simply isn't the answer we would have chosen. The person for whom we
were praying doesn't get better, but dies. The job is given to
someone else. You child's going to be in the one class you hoped he
wouldn't be next year. The election result appears to be disastrous.
You know the sort of thing.

Part of it, of course, is that we can't
see consequences the way God can. We can't see the future. The
apostles had no way of knowing that Saul of Tarsus would experience a
dramatic conversion and become possibly the greatest ever evangelist.
So they appointed Matthias, who was probably fantastic in his own
right, but not the person God meant to be the Apostle to the
Gentiles.

We can't see round the bend in the
road. We don't know what's going to happen next. I'm sure some of
us were very unhappy indeed about the result of last week's general
election – I know some of my friends were, very. But again, we
can't see what's going to happen next year, or even tomorrow. And we
know, too, that God can't always stop dreadful things from happening
as it might interfere with someone else's freedom of action. If I am
walking down the street and a young man jumps out to stab me because
I am a Christian preacher and he thinks that's God's will – well, I
hope it won't happen, but I know that God won't, or probably won't,
miraculously blunt that knife, and it would probably be very
nasty....

But that is unduly pessimistic! This
Sunday the Church throughout the world celebrates waiting, waiting
for the coming of the Holy Spirit. Waiting isn't easy, but for those
who held out, for the hundred and twenty in the upper room, for us,
if we wait, we will, eventually know the power of God at work within
us. We will be given gifts with which to do God's work; we will grow
into the kind of people we were always meant to be. We will be the
sort of people who have rivers of living water flowing from them -
not that we can see it, or touch it, but that people will know that
we are in touch with the source of all healing, and come to us for
comfort. And we, we hope, will be able to point them to the right
place where they can find healing for themselves - we will be able to
point them to Jesus. Amen.

Sunday, 19 April 2015

Very similar, but not quite identical, to one preached in 2009 with the same title. Moreover, the presence of two small boys in Church meant that I departed from my script more than somewhat, so the podcast is different again!

I
thought that today, for once, we wouldn’t look too closely at the
Gospel reading,

as
Luke’s account of Jesus’ appearance to the disciples after the
Resurrection

is
very similar to the account in John’s gospel,

which
I expect you looked at last week.

The
only thing I will point out is that Luke says Jesus actually ate with
them –

ghosts,
after all, don’t eat!

So
that particular detail is, for the gospel writer,

just
another proof that Jesus really was raised.

He
wasn’t just a ghost;

he
wasn’t just a figment of their imagination.

He
ate some fish –

and
there’s the dirty plate!

You
may have read the first chapter of this letter from John last week,
too.

I
want to focus on the passage we read today, in a minute.

It
isn’t quite a letter, is it –

it’s
more of a sermon.

He
doesn’t put in the chatty details that Paul puts into his letters,

nor
the personal messages.

Nobody
seems to know whether it was really the disciple that Jesus loved
that wrote the Gospel and this letter,

or
whether it was someone writing as from them, which was apparently a
recognised literary convention of the day.

But
I noticed last week that right at the very beginning of the letter,
or sermon – hey, let’s just call it an Epistle and have done –

right
at the very beginning, he says:

“We write to you about the Word of
life, which has existed from the very beginning.

We have heard it, and we have seen it
with our eyes;

yes, we have seen it, and our hands
have touched it.

When this life became visible, we saw
it;

so we speak of it and tell you about
the eternal life which was with the Father and was made known to us.”

In
other words, the writer, too, claims to have seen, known and touched
Jesus!

But
to today’s passage.

“See how much the Father has loved
us!

His love is so great that we are called
God's children –

and so, in fact, we are.”

“See
how much the Father has loved us!

His love is so great that we are called
God's children –

and
so, in fact, we are.”

We
are God’s children!

You
know, when you come to think of it, that’s a pretty terrifying
concept.

People
tend to think of themselves as serving God, or as worshipping God.

But
to be a child of God?

That’s
a whole different ball-game.

After
all, if we worship God or serve God,

that
doesn’t necessarily imply that God does anything for us in return.

But
if we are God’s children?

That’s
different!

That
implies that God is active in caring for us,

in
being involved in our lives,

in
minding.

Many
of us here this morning have had children of our own.

And
all of us have been children!

Perhaps
some of us didn’t have very satisfactory childhoods,

or
our parents weren’t all they should have been.

The
model of God as Father isn’t helpful to everybody, I know.

But
I still want to unpack it a bit, if I can, as I do think it’s
important.

We
are all children of God, so we are told.

We
are not servants.

We
are not just worshippers.

“Children”
implies a two-way relationship.

Actually,
it almost implies more than that.

It
implies that God does the doing;

we
don’t have to.

No,
seriously, think about it a minute.

I
have a daughter –

she’s
grown up and married now, of course,

but
for eighteen years she lived at home,

and
for many of those years she was totally dependant on Robert and me
for everything, and her little boys are on her and her husband –

for
food, for clothing, for education, you name it!

And
babies – my younger grandson is only just a toddler, rather than a
baby – need their parents even more than older children do.

Nicholas
can't even keep himself clean yet;

someone
has to change his nappy for him every few hours.

Parents
look after their children.

Quite
apart from the seeing to food, clothing, education and so on,

it’s
about the daily care –

seeing
to it they get up and so on.

All
the things we need to remind them to do or not do each day:

Have
you washed your hands?

Have
you cleaned your teeth?

Put
your shoes on.

Put
your coat on.

Pull
your trousers up, please.....

Don't
bite your nails!

And
so on and so forth.

But
it is, of course, because we care for and about our children,

and
want them to grow up to be the best possible person they can be.

And
parents do this because they love their children.

Ask
any new parent –

all
those sleepless nights,

the
pacing up and down, the nappies, the lack of sleep –

and
yet, they are delighting in that precious baby,

and
will show you photographs on the slightest provocation.

And
that is just how God feels about us!

Pretty
mind-blowing, isn’t it?

And
yes, God does want us to grow up to be the person he designed us to
be.

And
sometimes that will involve saying “No” to us,

as
we have to say it to our children.

“No,
you mustn’t do that;

no,
you can’t have that!”

Not
to be mean, not because we are horrid –

although
it can feel like that sometimes when you’re on the receiving end –

but
because it is for their best.

You
can’t let a child do something dangerous;

you
can’t allow them to be rude;

they
can’t eat unlimited sweets or ices.... and so on.

My
elder grandson once said, with a deep sigh, when reminded that sweets
weren't very good for him:

“Is
anything good for me?”

And
the same sort of thing with us.

God
loves us enormously and just wants what is best for us.

And
because we are, mostly, not small children, we tend to be aware of
this, and allow Him to work in us through the power of the Holy
Spirit.

John
goes on to comment about sin and sinfulness.

It
is rather an odd passage, this;

we
know that we do sin, sometimes, because we are human.

And
yet we know, too, that we are God’s children and we abide in Him.

Yet
John here says nobody who sins abides in God.

If
he were right, that would mean none of us would, since we are all
sinners.

But
then, are we?

I
mean, yes, we are, but the point is, we are sinners saved by grace,
as they say.

God
has redeemed us through his Son.

We
don’t “abide in sin” any more.

St
Paul tells us that when we become Christians, we are “made right”
with God through faith in his promises.

I
believe the technical term is “justified”, and you remember the
meaning because it’s “just as if I’d” never sinned.

However,
we also have to grow up to make this a reality in our lives.

That’s
called becoming sanctified, made saint-like.

One
author described it like this.

Suppose
there was a law against jumping in mud puddles.

And
you broke that law, and jumped.

You
would not only be guilty of breaking the law,

you
would also be covered in mud.

So
when you are justified, you are declared not guilty of breaking that
law –

and
being sanctified means that you wash off the mud!

So
we no longer abide in sin, but are we washing off the mud?

That’s
not always easy to do –

the
temptation to conform to the world’s standards can be overwhelming
at times.

We
all have different temptations, of course;

I
can’t claim to be virtuous because I don’t gamble,

since
gambling simply doesn’t appeal to me!

But
I am apt to procrastinate, and can be horrendously grouchy at times,
particularly when stressed, as I am at the moment.

Robert
is to retire next week

– NEXT
WEEK, oh help

and
our lives are going to change in unimaginable ways.

And
my parents are selling the house they have lived in since 1958, and
that is also going to bring huge changes.

I
am not very good at change!

I
am also very inclined to suffer from self-pity,

and
the other day I posted a really self-pitying update on Facebook
because of all this stress.

And
two posts down, someone from Brixton Hill had posted:

“Cast
all your anxiety upon Him, for he cares for you!”

That
was me told, then!

I
laughed, and deleted the status, and have tried to do just exactly
that, but it isn't always easy, is it?

And,
of course, there are those who have not said “Yes” to God,

who
perhaps have no idea of doing so.

In
this model, they are not God’s children –

but
that doesn’t mean they are not loved!

Indeed,
God so loved the world that he sent his Son while we were still
sinners, so we are told.

Sunday, 1 February 2015

This Sunday is one when the Church
traditionally celebrates the Presentation of Christ in the Temple,
which is the story we heard in our Gospel reading today.

Until very recently, Christian women in
many denominations would be “churched” about six weeks after
giving birth – either at a special service, or as a special prayer
said in the main service, to give thanks for a safe delivery and so
on. It seems to have died out now, largely, I think, because the
service was not transferred to the modern prayer books, and arguably
because childbirth is so very much safer than it used to be. Shame,
really – it would be a lovely thing to happen whenever someone
appeared in church with a new baby!

For Jewish women, though, the ritual
was also about purification. They would, traditionally, go to be
purified forty days after giving birth. I am not totally sure what
the process involved, but fairly certainly Mary would have had a
ritual bath before going to the Temple to make her thanksgiving, and
to present the baby.

The text says Mary and Joseph took a
pair of pigeons to sacrifice – interesting note that, because
that's what you took if you were poor; richer people sacrificed a
sheep. And if you were really, really poor and couldn't even afford
a pair of pigeons, I believe you were allowed to take some flour.
But for Mary and Joseph, it was a pair of pigeons.

And they present the baby – they
would, I think, have done this for any child, not just because Jesus
was special. And then it all gets a bit surreal, with the old man
and the old woman coming up and making prophecies over the child, and
so on.

Actually, the whole story is a bit
surreal, really. After all, St Matthew tells us that the Holy Family
fled Bethlehem and went to Egypt to avoid Herod's minions, but
according to Luke, they're just going home to Nazareth – a little
delayed, after the census, to allow Mary and the baby time to become
strong enough to travel, but six weeks old is six weeks old, and it
makes the perfect time for a visit to the Temple. The accounts are
definitely contradictory just here, but I don't think that really
matters too much – after all, truth isn't necessarily a matter of
historical accuracy.

Come to that, I don't suppose Simeon
really burst into song, any more than Mary or Zechariah. Luke has
put words into their mouths, rather like Shakespeare does to the
kings and queens of British history. Henry the Fifth is unlikely to
have said “This day is called the Feast of Crispian” and so on,
or “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more”, but he
probably rallied the troops with a sentiment of some kind, and it is
the same here. Zechariah, Mary and Simeon probably didn't say those
actual words that Luke gives them, but they probably did express that
sort of sentiment.

Although I often wonder why it is that
when Jesus reappears as a young man, nobody recognises him. We don't
hear of an elderly shepherd hobbling up to him and saying “Ah, I
remember how the angels sang when you were born!” But perhaps it
is as well – it means he had a loving, private, sensible childhood.
Which, I think, is partly why we see so very little of him as a
child, just that glimpse of him as a rather precocious adolescent in
the Temple. He needed to grow up in peace and security and love,
without the dreadfulness of who he was and why he had come hanging
over him.

But on this very first visit to the
Temple, he can't do more than smile and maybe vocalise a bit. It is
Simeon we are really more concerned with. His song, which the Church
calls the Nunc Dimittis, after the first two words of it in Latin, is
really the centre of today's reading. He is saying that now, at
last, he has seen God's salvation, and is happy to die. The baby
will be “a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of God's
people Israel.”

“A light
to lighten the Gentiles”. This is why another name for this
festival is Candlemas. Candlemas. In some churches, candles are
blessed for use throughout the year, but as we are no longer
dependent on candles as a light source, it might be more to the point
to bless our stock of light bulbs! Because what it's about is Jesus
as the Light of the World. A light to lighten the Gentiles,
certainly, but look how John's Gospel picks up and runs with that.
“The Word was the source of life,and this life brought light to
people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never
put it out.” And John's Gospel reports Jesus as having said: “I
am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will have the light of
life and will never walk in darkness.”

Jesus is the Light of the World, and
that's part of what we are celebrating today.

We rather take light for granted, here
in the West, don't we? We are so used to being able to flick on a
switch and it's light that we forget how dark it can be. We had a
brief power-cut last Saturday, and it felt very dark indeed! Even
though we have a really good emergency lantern and, of course,
torches on our phones. And candles, come to that – I make sure we
have a supply of emergency candles, just in case.

Not that a candle provides very much
light, of course – you can't see to read by it very well, or sew,
or any of the things people did before television and social media,
or, come to that, before houses were lit by electricity. But even a
candle can dispel the darkness. Even the faintest, most flickering
light means it isn't completely dark – you can see, even if only a
little. And sometimes for us the Light of the World is like that –
a candle in the distance, a faint, flickering light that we hardly
dare believe isn't our eyes just wanting to see. But sometimes, of
course, wonderfully, as I'm sure you've experienced, it's like
flicking on a light switch to illuminate the whole room. Sometimes
God's presence is overwhelmingly bright and light.

And other times not.

This time of year is half way between
the winter solstice and the spring equinox. It's not spring yet, but
the days are noticeably longer than they were at the start of the
year. There are daffodils and early rhubarb in the shops, and the
bulbs are beginning to pierce through the ground. The first
snowdrops will be out any day now. In the country, the hazel trees
are showing their catkins, and if you look closely at the trees, you
can see where the leaves are going to be in just a few weeks. We
hope. Candlemas is one of those days we say predict the weather –
like St Swithun's Day in July, when if it rains, it's going to go on
raining for the next six weeks. Only at Candlemas it's the opposite
– if it's a lovely day, then winter isn't over yet, but if it's
horrible, Spring is definitely on the way. The Americans call it
“Groundhog Day”, same principle – if the groundhog sees his
shadow, meaning if the sun is out, winter hasn't finished by any
manner of means, but if he can't, if the sun isn't shining, then
maybe it is.

So it's a funny time of year, still
winter, but with a promise of spring. And isn't that a good picture
of our Christian lives? We still see the atrocities, the horror of
terrorist attacks, the awfulnesses perpetrated by organisations like
Al Qaeda and Boko Haram. We still see that we, too, can be pretty
awful when we set our minds to it, simply because we are human. We
know that there are places inside us we'd really rather not look at.
It is definitely winter, and yet, and yet, there is the promise of
spring. There is still light. It might be only the flickering light
of a candle in another room, or it might be the full-on fluorescent
light of an overwhelming experience of God's presence, but there is
still light.

The infant Jesus was brought to the
Temple, and was proclaimed the Light to Lighten the Gentiles. But,
of course, that's not all – we too have that light inside us; you
remember Jesus reminded us not to keep it under a basket, but to
allow it to be seen. And again, the strength and quality of our
light will vary, due to time and circumstances, and possibly even
whether we slept well last night or what we had for breakfast.
Sometimes it will be dim and flickering, and other times we will be
alight with the flame of God's presence within us. It's largely
outwith our control, although of course, by the means of grace and so
on we can help ourselves come nearer to God. But it isn't something
we can force or struggle with – we just need to relax and allow God
to shine through us. Jesus is the Light of the World, and if we
follow Him, we will have the light of life and will never walk in
darkness. We will, not we should, or we must, or we ought to. We
will. Be it never so faint and flickering, we will have the light of
life. Amen.

Welcome! I am a Methodist Local Preacher, and preach roughly once a month, or thereabouts. If you wish to take a RSS feed, or become a follower, so that you know when a new sermon has been uploaded, please feel free to do so.